Jimmy Ålund remains one of my favorite racers, and getting to see him race (and win!) at Tierp Arena on his home turf was so much dang fun.

I am forever fascinated by the people within this sport who dedicate their lives to the pursuit of horsepower, speed, mastering the machine, and – ultimately – victory.

Drag racers are a particularly interesting lot.

You want the truth? My life is better every single time I get to stand next to a racer and ask them the questions that reveal a little bit of who they are and why they do what they do.

Racing is such a drug. The highs are so good that you can almost SEE the sparkles over the racer’s head when it hits.

But the lows….. oh man, it damages my heart to remember conversations with racers who are in the muck. They move towards you slowly, like they’re pulling through molasses, head down, shoulders slumped, with a big sigh preceding what will likely be a completely unusable quote.

But they come back for more. Almost always, this resilient breed of human comes back for more.

The stories of triumph in this sport most often have been built upon a foundation of crushing challenges, but that’s what makes victory so much more than a shiny trophy. It has value and impact and emotion and meaning when you work for it, when you rise again and again from the muck because you know what’s possible.

Victory in this sport is a moment of truth, a slice of time in which the triumphant are exactly who they set out to be.

Man, I love this sport.

Yes, drag racing. I will follow you anywhere.

P.S.I had the incredible good fortune of being aligned with Summit Racing Equipment for a number of years, which allowed me to travel the world and do what I love: tell the stories of people doing what they do.